Summary: Reading Time: 14 minutesIn order to tell a factual account of the Six Days War we have to first separate a lot of the myth from the reality. Growing up in the Bible Belt the story of Israel’s miraculous victory over the surrounding Arab armies that were set to push the Jews into the sea was told to me almost like a story from the Bible. It was a story full of legend, heroes and villains and also a lot of exaggeration.<br> <br> <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/06/the_six-day_war_israels_miraculous_victory.html">(Here’s an example of one of these recent recounting of the myth of the Six Days War.)</a><br> <br> As I separate the myth from reality let me begin by noting Israel’s victory was fantastic and overwhelming. But it was not miraculous. For most outside observers it was expected at the time. US President Lyndon Johnson was surprised by how well Israel did in the fighting compared to the Arab states but not by the fact Israel won the war. By 1967 Israel was already setting itself a part as a different caliber of nation in the Middle East compared to the surrounding Arab states.<br> <br> Even the name “Six Days War” sounds like this fast and incredible victory that no one could have expected. After all, wars last for years, not days, especially wars that are this overwhelming in their victory. That assumption is not really true though. Most of Israel’s wars, have been short. The nature of the conflicts between Israel and its neighbors must be short when they are fought on Israeli soil. A long war would almost by definition mean a war which Israel was losing. The Yom Kippur War in the 70s lasted 19 days. The Suez Crisis lasted 8 days.<br> Build Up to the 1967 Six Days War<br> <br> The Six Days War had been coming on for some time. A general trend in the history of the conflict between Israel and the Arab states during this time period is that a good fight was needed every few years or so to let the tension off. If there was not an outright fight taking shape then citizens of the region knew it was just a matter of time The rhetoric and tensions could not go undealt with for too long.<br> <br> The idea of Pan Arabism was dying and the sides of the Cold War still had not been totally settled in the Middle East. The rulers of the Arab states found it much harder to rule than they had imagined and for most of the region instability was a key characteristic of the states. Egypt was the exception as Nasser was still in charge and still regionally strong. In Jordan the Hussein monarchy was still in charge but largely because the king had learned to balance a dance between secret friendships with the Israelis and public alliance with Nasser.<br> <br> Just as important as the weakness of the surrounding Arab states, the Palestinians began to change in the 1960s. We will look at this more in depth in the next piece in this series but suffice it to say that the first generation of Palestinians born as refugees was now coming of age in the Middle East – and they were ready to do something about their own plight.<br> <br> Throughout the early and mid 60s and continuing even after the Six Days War small bands of Palestinians began to take up cross border guerilla actions against Israel. It became known as “the war of attrition” because each strike resulted in a counter strike from Israel and the stakes and costs of the actions kept growing higher and higher.<br> <br> Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan all held large Palestinian refugee populations who wanted their homes of their families back. They would sneak into Israel and conduct bombing missions. Israel would then counter. They could not find the Palestinians though so they would punish the state who was hosting them and bomb either Syria, Lebanon or Jordan.<br> Nasser Escalates Tensions for the Six Days War<br> <br> While all of this was going on Egypt’s strongman,
